The Mombasa site works in a community called Kikambala, which has a relatively high proportion of elderly men and women. These elders were kept from accessing basic education, and they are in turn unable to teach their children literacy skills. As a result, there are generations of low-literacy adults in their community.
Category Archives: Kenya
It feels like it snuck up on us, but we have reached the middle of October already! It may feel too early to think about Christmas, but at Chalice, now is the time to do a little planning ahead. Sponsors inquire with us about sending a gift of ‘special money’ to their children for a […]
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel School has a glorious namesake, but this time last year, the school was anything but beautiful. The walls were collapsing on rotten timber supports, exposing the students and staff to the elements year-round. They were cold, damp and muddy part of the year and sweltering and dusty the other parts. They […]
The Sisters of St Joseph Mombasa run Chalice’s Mombasa sponsor site, working in the low-income neighborhoods of this coastal city in Kenya. They run three homes for children: the Grandsons of Abraham Rescue Centre, Bakitah Girls Rescue Centre, and the Shanzu Orphanage. The Grandsons of Abraham Centre rescues, rehabilitates and educates boys who have lived in […]
For Safina, going to school every day was far from the reality she grew up with. Her mom was a single parent who struggled to provide four children with enough to eat, let alone enough money to pay school fees. Teachers, seeing she couldn’t pay, would send Safina home. She often missed school for weeks […]
In parts of Canada and the U.S., rainfall is so common, it’s almost a nuisance. We grumble as we walk home in the rain, or complain off-handedly to our colleagues about the commute to work. It’s tempting to forget that in many parts of the world, rain isn’t a nuisance – it’s life. Kenyans have […]
When Trina met Vincent at the airport, she burst into tears. It was an emotional reunion, fit for friends after years apart. And in a way, that was exactly their situation. Though they’d never met in person, Trina and Vincent had known each other for years. She sponsored him through Chalice when he was […]
When MaryAnne first looked at the sea of children in a Chalice sponsorship booklet, Eunice’s eyes stood out. Compared to all the other children, she looked “so sad,” MaryAnne shared in an interview. At the time, MaryAnne worked as Chalice’s International Operations Manager for Latin America. She already sponsored one child, and wanted to […]
Real talk: maybe you haven’t heard about Chalice’s critical needs program. Or maybe you have heard of it, but you’re less clear on what it accomplishes. In our latest blog post, we’re here to fill in the blanks, and nothing does that better than the story of Meru County’s soon-to-be newest hairdresser. Yvonne is studying […]
Many of us go through life with 20/20 vision and no need for glasses. But not so for Cecilia. The 21-year-old lost her vision at a young age. Raised by her single mother near our Mombasa site in Kenya, things took a turn for the worse when she got into an accident and injured her […]










